Over the last few weeks I've been trying to move away from my rather haphazard approach to studying the Civil War, in which I dart from one topic to another depending on mood, and am trying to find some way to approach it in a more unified or ordered manner. For example, I can talk about Antietam, hold my own in debates about McClellan's tactical skills, argue about Shiloh and so on. In my mind, though, I see these as seperate topics. I'm starting to feel that if I'm going to make any attempt to understand the military campaigns properly, I need to conceptualise them into some sort of order - seeing how A leads to B, or why event Q mattered to event at battle X and so on. As I'm starting to think about this, I decided to begin with the usual split between the Eastern and Western theatres of the war.

We tend to view the Western Theatre as a containing a seperate chain of events from those in the Eastern Theatre. Now, is this the correct way to conceputalise the war, or should we do more to see how what happened in one theatre affected events elsewhere? Certainly, changes in command and recalls to Washington spring to mind as one way in which the two theatres intertwined, but were there others? Or is the distinction between East and West a good one to keep, until we get to Sherman's March to Sea?

(Not sure if this is the correct forum for such idle speculation - am happy to move it elsewhere)